Hala Sakakini
Hala Sakakini, daughter of the Palestinian educator Khalil Sakakini, fled with her family (father, brother Sari, sister Dumia, & aunt Melia) their Jerusalem home in 1948, escaping Israeli mortar attacks. Hala recounts in this excerpt from her 1987 memoir "Jerusalem & I", her first visit to her occupied- home in 1967.
On Tuesday, July 4, 1967, one month after the Six-Day War, my sister and I visited our house in Katamon, Jerusalem, for the first time in nineteen years.
It was a sad encounter, like meeting a dear person whom you had last seen young, healthy and well groomed and finding that he had become old, sick and shabby. Even worse, it was like coming across a friend whose personality had undergone a drastic change and was no more the same person.
All through the years since 1948, we had lived in exile, away from our Jerusalem. We had almost given up hope of ever seeing Katamon and our house again. When at last the opportunity came to visit our old quarter, we hesitated to do so. That was not the way we wanted to go back.
The last time we had been there was on April 30, 1948, the day we fled from Jerusalem during the Palestine War. Our house was then exactly eleven years old. It was still in perfect condition. Everything about it was bright and shiny. Only a month before leaving we had had all the shutters freshly painted. The garden was well kept, and on that day in spring it was in full bloom. How different we found the house and the garden now.
We came from Ramallah, where we are living at present, to the Old City by taxi. We continued on foot in through Damascus Gate and then up the hill through the familiar narrow lanes of the Old City to Jaffa Gate (which was still closed at the time). Part of the stone barrier near that gate had recently been pulled down. While walking across the wide gap over the rubble in the thick dust, I turned to Dumia and said "This is a historic moment in our lives."
We had not been to the other side of the wall for nineteen long years.
As we walked along we started to notice old familiar sights: the shoeshine shop where as children we often sat on the high chairs and watched with interest how our old Armenian friend went about polishing our shoes. The shop was now in ruins. Further along, on the opposite side of the street, we saw the place where a delicatessen used to stand. Abu Shafiq was famous for his delicious Arabic sweets. Then ahead of us we saw the narrow two-storey building at the street-corner. There used to be the little fruit shop that belonged to Jawdat al Amad, who sold along with the fruit the local Arabic newspapers Falastin, Ad-Difa' and others. In the old days we would pass Amad's shop as we came down the street from Fast Hotel, then turn round the corner and there at the bus stop take No. 4 to Katamon and home.
We continued along Mamillah Road, which used to be a busy shopping street and which now had become an ugly, dirty slum district. We walked past the Zananiri premises but could hardly recognize the building.
On we went. It was rather a pleasant surprise to discover Stern's little shop exactly where we had left it nineteen years before. I think it is the only shop in that street that has remained unchanged. Further on we passed by Hammoudi's beauty salon and barbershop, or rather what used to be Hammoudi's. There was always a hustle and bustle in front of that shop with customers going in and coming out through a wide colorful bead-hung doorway.
Another much frequented place was the cafe across the street from Hammoudi's- Piccadilly. (Its proprietor, Mr. lssa Salfity, was a neighbor of ours in Katamon.) Piccadilly used to be a busy meeting-place. Whenever you walked past it or rode past it in bus No. 4 or bus No. 6, you would see most of the tables on the wide terrace occupied by Arab gentlemen, young and old, many of whom would be smoking narghilehs. In the forties Piccadilly was both my father's and my brother's favorite coffeehouse.
At this point we turned left and started going up Julian's Way towards the Y.M.C.A. and King David Hotel. Here we found everything exactly as we had known it nineteen years before. For a moment I felt as though we were back in 1948 and no period of time had elapsed.
Then we reached the Y.M.C.A. and stopped there for a while. Nostalgically we let our eyes rove over that huge, sprawling building - the auditorium where we had attended many interesting lectures, the wide terrace where we had enjoyed open-air concerts on summer nights, the gymnasium where we had attended innumerable gym classes. Then we passed the tennis courts where we had often watched Sari playing games with Robert Mushabbek and the Deeb brothers.
After we had passed the YMCA we started walking leisurely, enjoying beautiful sights that were so familiar to us. How often we walked down that street when we were residents of Katamon, going home in the moonlight after a concert or a cinema.
We were pleased to see on our right in the midst of an olive grove the Omariya School. The railway station further down, and the gas station opposite it, provided still more familiar sights; but the old grey wall around the railway station seemed so much lower than I had remembered it.
Next we came to the German Colony where we spent six happy years of our childhood and where we went to school the thirties. The first old building we saw was the Saal (the assembly hall) behind the school house. We noticed it had been turned into an Armenian church. Then we came to our school and there was the old clock high up on the building, but the big school bell which used to hang outside the front door was gone. The large playground was now cluttered with ugly pre-fabricated huts.
We walked on along the familiar tree-shaded street. Everything was as we had known it nineteen years before except that the houses looked shabby and the gardens neglected and full of litter. When we reached Eppinger's shop (which, of course, had been converted into something else) we turned left into the street on which we lived from 1931 to 1937. First we saw the little grocery shop at the street corner which was known to all the German colony as ''Ladle". It seemed to us more disorderly than it had ever been.
At last we stood in front of Bauerle's house where we used to live. That lovely brickhouse had also decayed. It looked so dark as though layers and layers of grey dust had stuck to it over the years with never a winter season to wash it clean. The young trees in the garden had grown huge and needed trimming.
We went back to the main street and continued past the old police station on our left, past Spinney’s, or at least where Spinney's used to be, past Sayegh's pharmacy, past Dajani’s greengrocery and Kaloti's butchershop, past the Garabedian villa, past thc German cemetry, past Samaha's white building on tile street corner, and then to the right past the Greek Colony and the Sporting Club. I remembered the pleasant bicycle rides I used to make with my friend Jeanne along this street on cool summer evenings in the early forties.
Now we were approaching our own quarter - Katamon. We grew excited and could hardly wait to see our own house. The first thing we noticed here was the many new buildings that had sprung up in the vacant plots. Also, second storey had been built on the roofs of previous villas, all of which made it quite difficult for us to recognize some of the houses.
At last we started going uphill on the last stretch of our journey. With some relief we saw the two Tleel houses standing unchanged as though to serve as landmarks. After the Tleel houses we came to the twin Murcos villas, which we also found unaltered. Between these two villas we caught a glimpse of our house for the first time. We were relieved to see that the red tiles on the roof were still there, which meant that they had not built a second storey over our house. We quickened our pace past the Damiani house. (That grand villa stood forlorn, neglected and lifeless in its huge garden.)
We turned right and walked along our own familiar tree-shaded lane, round the Damiani garden, past the Homsi apartment building where my grandmother and uncles, the Awads, the Sfeirs, and the Budeiris used to live, past the third Tleel house, our next-door neighbours, and at last we were there. We had reached our destination. It was a sad moment.
The house appeared intact from the outside, but it somehow looked darker. The walls seemed so dusty, the paint on the shutters had worn off, the stairs were dirty. But I think what made all the difference was the state of the garden. Gone was the beautiful, fragrant honeysuckle over the garden gate, gone was the jasmine shrub leaning against the house. The big adalias of many colours in front of the house were, of course, not there anymore. The garden was dry and brown and covered with litter. Right in front of the house, in the middle of the garden, they had erected an ugly wooden structure that was an eyesore.
A young man in thc street told us that the house was being used as a nursery and kindergarten. There was some consolation in that. I remembered my father tenderly repeating the words of Jesus: "Let the children come unto me."
We went up the stairs. The verandah was so bare. The same old lamp stuck to the ceiling. An iron railing all around the verandah had been put up apparently to prevent the children from climbing. We hesitated for a few moments, then we opened our front door and entered (as the electric bell had been taken out and no one it seems had heard our knocking). We stood at last inside, right in the middle of our big living room. The wide folding door that used to separate the living room from the dining room at thc back was gone. The two rooms now formed one large hall which was apparently being used as a playroom for the children. Except for a few colourful decorations and pictures hanging on the walls the place was bare. We walked in and had a look at what used to be our dining room. It was like in a dream.
I would have liked for us to spend some time more all alone in the house in order quietly to relive the many memories that came rushing through my mind, but this could not be. We were afraid someone would come out of a room and start accusing us of trespassing (as happened to several of our friends who had gone to visit their houses). We could hear children's voices coming from the room that used to be our sitting room. We knocked on the door. Two ladies appeared —one a dark young lady and the other an elderly European lady.
We addressed them first in Arabic, but they seemed not to understand; so we asked them if they spoke English, but they shook their heads; so we started to talk in German and the elderly lady understood. We tried to explain: "This is our house. We used to live here before 1948. This is the first time we see it nineteen years ..."
The elderly lady was apparently moved, but she immediately began telling us that she too had lost a house in Poland, as though we personally or the Arabs in general were to blame for that. We saw it was no use arguing with her. We went through all the house room by room - our parents' bedroom, our bedroom, Aunt Melia's bedroom, the sitting room and the library (which were now one large room, as the wall between them had been pulled down), the dining room, the kitchen. The house was more or less in good condition, but everything was so different. It was no more home.
We went out to the verandah again. The little children swarmed around us and made happy noises, but we stood there as in a daze looking across the street and the square at our neighbours' houses - the Sliheet house, thc Sruji house, the Tleel houses. lt is people that make up a neighbourhood and when they are gone it will never be the same again.
We left our house and our immediate neighbourhood with a sense of emptiness, with a feeling of deep disappointment and frustration. The familiar streets were there, all the houses were there, but so much was missing. We felt like strangers in our own quarter.
On Tuesday, July 4, 1967, one month after the Six-Day War, my sister and I visited our house in Katamon, Jerusalem, for the first time in nineteen years.
It was a sad encounter, like meeting a dear person whom you had last seen young, healthy and well groomed and finding that he had become old, sick and shabby. Even worse, it was like coming across a friend whose personality had undergone a drastic change and was no more the same person.
All through the years since 1948, we had lived in exile, away from our Jerusalem. We had almost given up hope of ever seeing Katamon and our house again. When at last the opportunity came to visit our old quarter, we hesitated to do so. That was not the way we wanted to go back.
The last time we had been there was on April 30, 1948, the day we fled from Jerusalem during the Palestine War. Our house was then exactly eleven years old. It was still in perfect condition. Everything about it was bright and shiny. Only a month before leaving we had had all the shutters freshly painted. The garden was well kept, and on that day in spring it was in full bloom. How different we found the house and the garden now.
We came from Ramallah, where we are living at present, to the Old City by taxi. We continued on foot in through Damascus Gate and then up the hill through the familiar narrow lanes of the Old City to Jaffa Gate (which was still closed at the time). Part of the stone barrier near that gate had recently been pulled down. While walking across the wide gap over the rubble in the thick dust, I turned to Dumia and said "This is a historic moment in our lives."
We had not been to the other side of the wall for nineteen long years.
As we walked along we started to notice old familiar sights: the shoeshine shop where as children we often sat on the high chairs and watched with interest how our old Armenian friend went about polishing our shoes. The shop was now in ruins. Further along, on the opposite side of the street, we saw the place where a delicatessen used to stand. Abu Shafiq was famous for his delicious Arabic sweets. Then ahead of us we saw the narrow two-storey building at the street-corner. There used to be the little fruit shop that belonged to Jawdat al Amad, who sold along with the fruit the local Arabic newspapers Falastin, Ad-Difa' and others. In the old days we would pass Amad's shop as we came down the street from Fast Hotel, then turn round the corner and there at the bus stop take No. 4 to Katamon and home.
We continued along Mamillah Road, which used to be a busy shopping street and which now had become an ugly, dirty slum district. We walked past the Zananiri premises but could hardly recognize the building.
On we went. It was rather a pleasant surprise to discover Stern's little shop exactly where we had left it nineteen years before. I think it is the only shop in that street that has remained unchanged. Further on we passed by Hammoudi's beauty salon and barbershop, or rather what used to be Hammoudi's. There was always a hustle and bustle in front of that shop with customers going in and coming out through a wide colorful bead-hung doorway.
Another much frequented place was the cafe across the street from Hammoudi's- Piccadilly. (Its proprietor, Mr. lssa Salfity, was a neighbor of ours in Katamon.) Piccadilly used to be a busy meeting-place. Whenever you walked past it or rode past it in bus No. 4 or bus No. 6, you would see most of the tables on the wide terrace occupied by Arab gentlemen, young and old, many of whom would be smoking narghilehs. In the forties Piccadilly was both my father's and my brother's favorite coffeehouse.
At this point we turned left and started going up Julian's Way towards the Y.M.C.A. and King David Hotel. Here we found everything exactly as we had known it nineteen years before. For a moment I felt as though we were back in 1948 and no period of time had elapsed.
Then we reached the Y.M.C.A. and stopped there for a while. Nostalgically we let our eyes rove over that huge, sprawling building - the auditorium where we had attended many interesting lectures, the wide terrace where we had enjoyed open-air concerts on summer nights, the gymnasium where we had attended innumerable gym classes. Then we passed the tennis courts where we had often watched Sari playing games with Robert Mushabbek and the Deeb brothers.
After we had passed the YMCA we started walking leisurely, enjoying beautiful sights that were so familiar to us. How often we walked down that street when we were residents of Katamon, going home in the moonlight after a concert or a cinema.
We were pleased to see on our right in the midst of an olive grove the Omariya School. The railway station further down, and the gas station opposite it, provided still more familiar sights; but the old grey wall around the railway station seemed so much lower than I had remembered it.
Next we came to the German Colony where we spent six happy years of our childhood and where we went to school the thirties. The first old building we saw was the Saal (the assembly hall) behind the school house. We noticed it had been turned into an Armenian church. Then we came to our school and there was the old clock high up on the building, but the big school bell which used to hang outside the front door was gone. The large playground was now cluttered with ugly pre-fabricated huts.
We walked on along the familiar tree-shaded street. Everything was as we had known it nineteen years before except that the houses looked shabby and the gardens neglected and full of litter. When we reached Eppinger's shop (which, of course, had been converted into something else) we turned left into the street on which we lived from 1931 to 1937. First we saw the little grocery shop at the street corner which was known to all the German colony as ''Ladle". It seemed to us more disorderly than it had ever been.
At last we stood in front of Bauerle's house where we used to live. That lovely brickhouse had also decayed. It looked so dark as though layers and layers of grey dust had stuck to it over the years with never a winter season to wash it clean. The young trees in the garden had grown huge and needed trimming.
We went back to the main street and continued past the old police station on our left, past Spinney’s, or at least where Spinney's used to be, past Sayegh's pharmacy, past Dajani’s greengrocery and Kaloti's butchershop, past the Garabedian villa, past thc German cemetry, past Samaha's white building on tile street corner, and then to the right past the Greek Colony and the Sporting Club. I remembered the pleasant bicycle rides I used to make with my friend Jeanne along this street on cool summer evenings in the early forties.
Now we were approaching our own quarter - Katamon. We grew excited and could hardly wait to see our own house. The first thing we noticed here was the many new buildings that had sprung up in the vacant plots. Also, second storey had been built on the roofs of previous villas, all of which made it quite difficult for us to recognize some of the houses.
At last we started going uphill on the last stretch of our journey. With some relief we saw the two Tleel houses standing unchanged as though to serve as landmarks. After the Tleel houses we came to the twin Murcos villas, which we also found unaltered. Between these two villas we caught a glimpse of our house for the first time. We were relieved to see that the red tiles on the roof were still there, which meant that they had not built a second storey over our house. We quickened our pace past the Damiani house. (That grand villa stood forlorn, neglected and lifeless in its huge garden.)
We turned right and walked along our own familiar tree-shaded lane, round the Damiani garden, past the Homsi apartment building where my grandmother and uncles, the Awads, the Sfeirs, and the Budeiris used to live, past the third Tleel house, our next-door neighbours, and at last we were there. We had reached our destination. It was a sad moment.
The house appeared intact from the outside, but it somehow looked darker. The walls seemed so dusty, the paint on the shutters had worn off, the stairs were dirty. But I think what made all the difference was the state of the garden. Gone was the beautiful, fragrant honeysuckle over the garden gate, gone was the jasmine shrub leaning against the house. The big adalias of many colours in front of the house were, of course, not there anymore. The garden was dry and brown and covered with litter. Right in front of the house, in the middle of the garden, they had erected an ugly wooden structure that was an eyesore.
A young man in thc street told us that the house was being used as a nursery and kindergarten. There was some consolation in that. I remembered my father tenderly repeating the words of Jesus: "Let the children come unto me."
We went up the stairs. The verandah was so bare. The same old lamp stuck to the ceiling. An iron railing all around the verandah had been put up apparently to prevent the children from climbing. We hesitated for a few moments, then we opened our front door and entered (as the electric bell had been taken out and no one it seems had heard our knocking). We stood at last inside, right in the middle of our big living room. The wide folding door that used to separate the living room from the dining room at thc back was gone. The two rooms now formed one large hall which was apparently being used as a playroom for the children. Except for a few colourful decorations and pictures hanging on the walls the place was bare. We walked in and had a look at what used to be our dining room. It was like in a dream.
I would have liked for us to spend some time more all alone in the house in order quietly to relive the many memories that came rushing through my mind, but this could not be. We were afraid someone would come out of a room and start accusing us of trespassing (as happened to several of our friends who had gone to visit their houses). We could hear children's voices coming from the room that used to be our sitting room. We knocked on the door. Two ladies appeared —one a dark young lady and the other an elderly European lady.
We addressed them first in Arabic, but they seemed not to understand; so we asked them if they spoke English, but they shook their heads; so we started to talk in German and the elderly lady understood. We tried to explain: "This is our house. We used to live here before 1948. This is the first time we see it nineteen years ..."
The elderly lady was apparently moved, but she immediately began telling us that she too had lost a house in Poland, as though we personally or the Arabs in general were to blame for that. We saw it was no use arguing with her. We went through all the house room by room - our parents' bedroom, our bedroom, Aunt Melia's bedroom, the sitting room and the library (which were now one large room, as the wall between them had been pulled down), the dining room, the kitchen. The house was more or less in good condition, but everything was so different. It was no more home.
We went out to the verandah again. The little children swarmed around us and made happy noises, but we stood there as in a daze looking across the street and the square at our neighbours' houses - the Sliheet house, thc Sruji house, the Tleel houses. lt is people that make up a neighbourhood and when they are gone it will never be the same again.
We left our house and our immediate neighbourhood with a sense of emptiness, with a feeling of deep disappointment and frustration. The familiar streets were there, all the houses were there, but so much was missing. We felt like strangers in our own quarter.
3 eye witness testimonies of the Deir Yassin massacre as told to journalist Elias Zananiri, previously published in 9.4.1997 in "Gulf News".
On the eve of April 9th 1948, armed members of Jewish underground groups attacked the village, a strategic site towering Jerusalem from the West. After the fall of Al Qastal a few days earlier and the killing of Palestinian guerrilla leader Abdul Qader Al Husseini, Deir Yassin became the most important point on the road to Jerusalem.
TESTIMONY I:M.A.R. Al Y.(Abu Mahmud) 70, currently lives in the Old City of Jerusalem, below are excerpts from his testimony:
"I was in the village when the Jews attacked. I and my colleagues were on the western side of the village, opposite Al Qastal. We had our guns on us. All villagers, mainly the youths, were ready for whatever may happen after the Qastal battle was over. By 1630 on Thursday 8 April 1948, Abdul Qader Husseini was killed as we were watching the battle from a distance. After his death, we took precautionary measures in case anything would happen: We guarded the village until 0230 the next morning when the Jews started entering the village with the use of spot and search lights looking for our fighters. The Jews closed on the village amid exchanges of fire with us. Once they entered the village, fighting became very heavy in the eastern side and later it spread to other parts, to the quarry, to the village center until it reached the western edge. The battle was on three fronts, east, south and north. The Jews used all sorts of automatic weapons, tanks, missiles, cannons. They used to enter houses and kill women and children indiscriminately. The youths in the village fought bravely against them and the fighting continued until it was around 1530 afternoon.
We had no aid or support from any party. They took about 40 prisoners from the village. But after the battle was over, they took them to the quarry where they shot them dead and threw their bodies in the quarry. After they removed their dead and wounded, they took the prisoners and killed them. They took the elderly prisoners, women and men and took them out of the village, yet they killed the youths. They called on us to surrender, to throw our weapons and to save ourselves. But we did not imagine them breaking into the village. We expected the fighting to last one or two hours, after which they would retreat. But they continued the fighting(..).
We had trenches. The Jews filled one of those trenches with sand and rocks in order for their tanks to cross. When we hit the tank, it started firing from its machine-guns at our positions in the western edge of the village.
(..)I remember, from what my uncle’s wife told me, that an uncle of mine, who was a schoolmaster, had killed the commander of the invading gangs on the staircase of one of the houses and later he disappeared for three days. Then, they found him with his mother, originally from Latakia in Syria, they saw him with her, his name was Ribhi Atiyyeh. She disguised him in women's clothes to make sure that she could get him out of the village. They identified that he was a man, they opened fire and killed him. That is what I heard from my uncle’s wife, but I did not see it happening before my eyes.
After the June 1967 war, I met a Jewish eyewitness, Ibrahim Najjar (Israeli of Arab extraction), who lived in Givat Shaul and whom I had known before 1948. He took me to visit the village, as we arrived, I stood by the well and read some verses from the Koran. He told me not to do that. "There isn’t anybody here. Come with me and I will show you were they were all buried." He took me to the quarry where he said: "Here is where you should read the Koran. Two Jews held a body of an Arab dead and threw it down in the valley, some 20 meters in depth." That is were they threw bodies of the 14 martyrs who were killed there."
TESTIMONY II: Um Mahmud, wife of Abu Mahmud, was 15 years old at the time.
"We were inside the house. We heard shooting outside. My mother woke us up. We knew the Jews had attacked us. My cousin and his sister came running and said the Jews were already in our garden. In the meantime, fighting became heavier and we heard lots of gunshots outside. A bomb was thrown at us and it exploded close to where we were in the yard. (..) My sister- in-law did not want to leave. She was frightened. The girl was two months old and the boy about three. I took the two and my mother said we should go to my uncle’s house.
I saw how Hilweh Zeidan was killed, along with her husband, her son, her brother and Khumayyes. Hilweh Zeidan went out to collect the body of her husband. They shot her and she fell over his body.(..) I also saw Hayat Bilbeissi, a nurse from Jerusalem serving in the village, as she was shot before the house door of Musa Hassan. The daughter of Abu El Abed was shot dead as she held her niece, a baby. The baby was shot too.(..) Whomever tried to run away was shot dead."
TESTIMONY III: A.Y.J., Abu Yousef, also 70 years old. He lives in Am’ari refugee camp near Ramallah.
"(..)After the battle, the Jews took elderly men and women and youths, including 4 of my cousins and a nephew. They took them all. Women who had on them gold and money, were stripped of their gold. After the Jews removed their dead and wounded, they took the men to the quarry and sprayed them all with bullets.
(..)One woman had her son taken some 40 to 60 meters away from where she and the rest of the women stood by, and shot him dead. Then they brought Jewish kids to throw stones at his body. They later poured kerosene on his body and set it ablaze while the women watched from a distance. We later collected ourselves, & checked who was missing. At Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, we were gathered by the Arab Supreme Committee. Each of us was looking for a son, a daughter, a sister or a mother.
All men were busy fighting. Eyewitnesses were only women. The elderly men were told to remove the dead, both Arabs and Jews. They took the bodies of the Jews and left the Arab bodies until they later were thrown in a well in the village center."
On the eve of April 9th 1948, armed members of Jewish underground groups attacked the village, a strategic site towering Jerusalem from the West. After the fall of Al Qastal a few days earlier and the killing of Palestinian guerrilla leader Abdul Qader Al Husseini, Deir Yassin became the most important point on the road to Jerusalem.
TESTIMONY I:M.A.R. Al Y.(Abu Mahmud) 70, currently lives in the Old City of Jerusalem, below are excerpts from his testimony:
"I was in the village when the Jews attacked. I and my colleagues were on the western side of the village, opposite Al Qastal. We had our guns on us. All villagers, mainly the youths, were ready for whatever may happen after the Qastal battle was over. By 1630 on Thursday 8 April 1948, Abdul Qader Husseini was killed as we were watching the battle from a distance. After his death, we took precautionary measures in case anything would happen: We guarded the village until 0230 the next morning when the Jews started entering the village with the use of spot and search lights looking for our fighters. The Jews closed on the village amid exchanges of fire with us. Once they entered the village, fighting became very heavy in the eastern side and later it spread to other parts, to the quarry, to the village center until it reached the western edge. The battle was on three fronts, east, south and north. The Jews used all sorts of automatic weapons, tanks, missiles, cannons. They used to enter houses and kill women and children indiscriminately. The youths in the village fought bravely against them and the fighting continued until it was around 1530 afternoon.
We had no aid or support from any party. They took about 40 prisoners from the village. But after the battle was over, they took them to the quarry where they shot them dead and threw their bodies in the quarry. After they removed their dead and wounded, they took the prisoners and killed them. They took the elderly prisoners, women and men and took them out of the village, yet they killed the youths. They called on us to surrender, to throw our weapons and to save ourselves. But we did not imagine them breaking into the village. We expected the fighting to last one or two hours, after which they would retreat. But they continued the fighting(..).
We had trenches. The Jews filled one of those trenches with sand and rocks in order for their tanks to cross. When we hit the tank, it started firing from its machine-guns at our positions in the western edge of the village.
(..)I remember, from what my uncle’s wife told me, that an uncle of mine, who was a schoolmaster, had killed the commander of the invading gangs on the staircase of one of the houses and later he disappeared for three days. Then, they found him with his mother, originally from Latakia in Syria, they saw him with her, his name was Ribhi Atiyyeh. She disguised him in women's clothes to make sure that she could get him out of the village. They identified that he was a man, they opened fire and killed him. That is what I heard from my uncle’s wife, but I did not see it happening before my eyes.
After the June 1967 war, I met a Jewish eyewitness, Ibrahim Najjar (Israeli of Arab extraction), who lived in Givat Shaul and whom I had known before 1948. He took me to visit the village, as we arrived, I stood by the well and read some verses from the Koran. He told me not to do that. "There isn’t anybody here. Come with me and I will show you were they were all buried." He took me to the quarry where he said: "Here is where you should read the Koran. Two Jews held a body of an Arab dead and threw it down in the valley, some 20 meters in depth." That is were they threw bodies of the 14 martyrs who were killed there."
TESTIMONY II: Um Mahmud, wife of Abu Mahmud, was 15 years old at the time.
"We were inside the house. We heard shooting outside. My mother woke us up. We knew the Jews had attacked us. My cousin and his sister came running and said the Jews were already in our garden. In the meantime, fighting became heavier and we heard lots of gunshots outside. A bomb was thrown at us and it exploded close to where we were in the yard. (..) My sister- in-law did not want to leave. She was frightened. The girl was two months old and the boy about three. I took the two and my mother said we should go to my uncle’s house.
I saw how Hilweh Zeidan was killed, along with her husband, her son, her brother and Khumayyes. Hilweh Zeidan went out to collect the body of her husband. They shot her and she fell over his body.(..) I also saw Hayat Bilbeissi, a nurse from Jerusalem serving in the village, as she was shot before the house door of Musa Hassan. The daughter of Abu El Abed was shot dead as she held her niece, a baby. The baby was shot too.(..) Whomever tried to run away was shot dead."
TESTIMONY III: A.Y.J., Abu Yousef, also 70 years old. He lives in Am’ari refugee camp near Ramallah.
"(..)After the battle, the Jews took elderly men and women and youths, including 4 of my cousins and a nephew. They took them all. Women who had on them gold and money, were stripped of their gold. After the Jews removed their dead and wounded, they took the men to the quarry and sprayed them all with bullets.
(..)One woman had her son taken some 40 to 60 meters away from where she and the rest of the women stood by, and shot him dead. Then they brought Jewish kids to throw stones at his body. They later poured kerosene on his body and set it ablaze while the women watched from a distance. We later collected ourselves, & checked who was missing. At Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, we were gathered by the Arab Supreme Committee. Each of us was looking for a son, a daughter, a sister or a mother.
All men were busy fighting. Eyewitnesses were only women. The elderly men were told to remove the dead, both Arabs and Jews. They took the bodies of the Jews and left the Arab bodies until they later were thrown in a well in the village center."
Reflections of a Native Son:
A Jerusalem Memoir Professor Fouad Moughrabi, Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee.
I was born on a hill overlooking Ein Kerem. From the top of that hill, one could easily see the skyline of Jerusalem during the day and its shining lights during the night. My father managed a resort run by the Anglican Church atop Jebel El-Rab (the hill of God). On Sundays, dignified people (including many Jews and foreigners) would come there for tea and dessert. Down in the valley where the beautiful village, known for its greenery, gardens, and scenic landscape, was nestled, the fields would be dotted with groups of picnickers from Jerusalem, out for a relaxing day in the country. Ein Kerem is the birthplace of John the Baptist and Mary is said to have visited it before giving birth to Jesus.
It was a[n] (..) Arab village until 1948, with some Christians and some Muslims. It is now part of Jewish West Jerusalem, and no Arabs live there, the village having been emptied of its original inhabitants in 1948. Ehud Olmert, the right wing mayor of Jerusalem, wants to build more houses in the area in order to bolster the overall number of Jews in Jerusalem as a whole. The Jewish inhabitants, mostly highly educated professionals, prefer to keep it as is. Says Karl Perkal, one of the leaders of the residents' committee which is fighting development: "Ein Kerem is a magnet for Christians from abroad because they are pleased to come to a place that basically looks like it did when Jesus walked the land...This is also important to nature lovers because it is the last green space in Jerusalem. We've been fighting for a generation to keep developers out." (Christian Science Monitor, 9 February, 1998) I recall going with my grandmother to the pine forest atop the mountain and down near the Russian convent to pick mushrooms. She would take time out to show me the various flowers, which she called Hannoun. She had a specific name for each one and could tell me exactly what each was good for. Some were useful for an upset stomach and some for helping you go to sleep. For each ailment there seemed to be a remedy right there in those fields. And then there was the ubiquitous thyme (Za'tar) which smelled strong and which we picked in abundance. She would dry some and later grind it. Sometimes, she would add some to the bread that she baked in an oven (Taboun) made of clay.
I also remember accompanying my grandmother during her daily trek to work in the fields or to take produce or fruits, which she carried in a wide basket on top of her head and walked the few kilometers to Jerusalem to sell it in Katamon.
She was, it seemed, one with the soil and its fruits. It is only now as I write this down and as the memories flood my soul that I fully realize the impact she had on me. I love going to a market to marvel at the beauty of such things and I [handle] them with the same tenderness that she once showed me. My grandmother, on my mother's side, was a tall woman with an imposing presence. She single-handedly raised four boys and a girl while working the fields and selling the fruits of her labor in order to (make) out a modest living for her family. Her face was already wrinkled well before the age when such marks were supposed to appear. It almost matched the topography of the land that she so carefully and diligently cultivated in much the same way that her forebears had done for thousands of years. The color of her face almost matched that of the olives that she picked, pressed and ate.
On cold winter evenings, I remember falling asleep in her lap, next to a (.) kerosene stove, listening to the stories that I incessantly wanted to hear over and over again. She was happy to pass on the folklore that she had inherited. Years later, I discovered that many of these stories were in fact part of the Old Testament and the Koran. She was an illiterate woman but she knew her stories, passed on from one generation to the next, forming a common heritage and perhaps becoming part of the religious lore.
She was the matriarch of the family. Her husband played a peripheral role although he was granted the respect that a dignified elder was entitled to. But he was disabled and could not carry his share of the burden. Therefore, he often deferred to her in matters of consequence. But she never made him feel that she was the one who made these fateful decisions and she never let on to the outside world that she was the one who ran the show. She was feared and respected in the village because of her no-nonsense approach, her candor and her outspokenness about various issues. When my father came to ask for my mother's hand, fierce objections erupted among members of the extended family. Cousins lay first claim and argued against giving the young girl away to a foreigner who had no roots and no known relatives. My father was born in a neighboring village to a father who had migrated to Palestine from Algeria and to a Palestinian mother. Both of his parents died soon after he was born and he grew up in the Islamic orphanage in the Old City of Jerusalem. He learned a variety of skills including carpet weaving and cooking. Later he got a job at the resort atop Jebel El-Rab where he spotted my mother.
My grandmother made the controversial decision to give her only daughter away to this man and managed to convince her immediate family to go along. I have a picture of my father and mother taken at a Jerusalem studio owned by an Armenian photographer shortly after they got married. He is sitting in a chair looking solemn, as befits the occasion, and she is standing next to him, with her right hand on his shoulder and a shy smile on her face. He is wearing a nicely cut western style suit, tailored in Jerusalem. Only his shoes are somewhat rough, and not polished, showing perhaps a person who walks long distances in the fields. She is wearing her wedding dress, a beautiful traditional Palestinian Thob that was the product of many hours of labor by the women in the family and in the village. He does not look like a peasant or even the son of a peasant. His hair is well groomed and his hands are soft. She, on the other hand, definitely looks like the daughter of peasants. He was twenty-four years old and she was only eighteen.
My father built a small house on a hill overlooking Ein Kerem. On the other side of the hill was the tiny village of Jorah where my mother's relatives lived. This small stone house was typical of village constructions, designed to be expanded as time goes on with one room added here and another added there. Outside, there was a small kitchen and an outhouse. On the eastern part of the house, a bunch of bougainvillea grew in a haphazard manner. I remember crawling underneath them to look for eggs hatched by our chickens. On the Western side, there were a couple of olive trees and a fig tree. And right next to the kitchen, there was a water well. I had a cat, a dog, and at one point, a sheep. One day, a sheepherder went by with his flock and I chased him and his sheep screaming that I wanted to have one. He gave me a sheep on condition that I would take care of him.
There were, however, moments of anxiety generated by talk about a vague and distant threat coming from the Jews. The only ones I had seen in those days were the distinguished looking ones who frequented my father's place of work and the pediatrician that my parents had taken me to in Jerusalem.
They were kind and cultured people and my father used to say that some day I will become educated and important like them. I do remember that one day my uncles joined a crowd of other men from the village and walked in a hurry to a nearby village called Kastal where a big battle was going on between the Arabs and the Jews. Abdul Kader Husseini was leading the Arabs in this battle. We laughed at Uncle Mohammed, the black sheep of the family, a simple man with no education at all, who was usually left in charge of the goats. He took an old hunting musket, which had not been fired in many years and joined [in] (.). A few hours later he came back while the others joined the crowd of fighters to Jerusalem to participate in the funeral of the fallen commander Abdul Kader. Meanwhile, the Jewish forces, which had been driven out of Kastal, simply walked back in and took it over, thereby controlling once and for all the main road to Jerusalem.
I was sent to a Kuttab in the village. This one room schoolhouse was run by a religious man who was supposed to teach us how to read, write and memorize the Koran. I memorized a small part of the Koran and learned to read and write. The few Suras came in handy on Fridays when my father would take me to the Mosque in Jerusalem.
Two things stand out in my memory: one was the awe-inspiring beauty of the Dome of the Rock. My father would explain to me its history and point out its artistic beauty. To me, however, what was most enjoyable was to sit on the clean stone pavement in the coolness of the shade and to eat the kinds of things I usually did not get to eat at home, namely Ka'ak and Falafel with a bit of Za'tar and a hard-boiled egg. The second thing that always struck me was the incredible crowd that filled the narrow streets and alleys of the Old City as the faithful departed following their prayers. As a little boy, I felt claustrophobic as I was pushed and shoved by people and carts. I remember being envious of the children who roamed the streets and alleyways of the city, joking, teasing and running skillfully through the crowd. To me, they seemed free and clever.
I always imagined myself joining their frolics in total abandon, watching the tourists go by, knowing every nook and cranny of the city. The city always seemed mysterious to me, enveloped in layers, with doors that led into courtyards, to other doors, and stairs going to upper floors at different angles. What do these people do behind these doors, in these courtyards, and in those dark alleys?. The women who hid behind dark veils and walked in groups, always clad in black added to the mystery. I never saw any women like that. I would follow them, and as they invariably walked in the fabric shops, I would sneak a look at their faces as they lifted their veils to look more closely at the fabric they were thinking of buying. Some of them would glance quickly in my direction and then turn away, reassured that this invader is nothing but a short and insignificant tot. Nearly always, I felt a kind of disappointment at the ordinariness of their looks. Invariably, my father would buy some things for the house depending upon what was in season: possibly some oranges and bananas and always some sweets like Baklava. He would also buy me some trinket and we would then head to the packed bus that would take us back to Ein Kerem.
In April 1948, following the massacre at Deir Yassin, the feelings of fear and anxiety, which used to be vague and distant began to appear more imminent and more real. I could still hear my grandmother and my mother hurling curses mostly on the British and often on the Jews. My mother packed some clothes in a long sack that she had sewn and left it in the corner of the house. At night, some of the men would go to the edge of the village and do guard duty. One night, everyone was awakened to the sound of one of these men who went through the village screaming : "Go !, the Jews are coming." I can still recall the voice and the ensuing chaos. Within a short period of time, the entire village was marching out, carrying bare essentials, some bedding on a mule, some clothing, and some food. We spent the night in the fields a few kilometers out.
Overhead we could see streaming lights and we could hear whizzing bullets and explosions. From a distance, we could see other villages pack up and leave in the same chaotic and hurried manner. The next day, we resumed our trek in the direction of a village called Ras Abu ’Ammar. On the way, we could see some dead bodies and some scattered limbs where explosions had occurred and tore up human bodies that were left lying there. We spent a month in this village and then, when the Jews came again we resumed our walk in the direction of Bethlehem.(..)
Our exile from our homes was supposed to be for a short duration. People thought that they would be going back to their homes and land in a matter of weeks. Surely the Arab armies would enter Palestine and stop the Jews. The frame of reference, for most people, were the Arab conquests in the early Islamic period when armies swept through many lands and defeated enemies with superior force, or the battles waged by Salah Eddin against the foreign invaders.(..)
Shortly afterwards, however, as our exile began to get longer and longer, new stories began to emerge. They all focused on great conspiracies being hatched against the Palestinians. The Jordanian Arab Legion, we were told, did not fight at all. King Abdullah and his British commander Glubb Pasha handed Palestine over to the Jews. The Egyptian Army fought with empty bullets. Only the Iraqis and some volunteers from various Arab countries did any worthwhile fighting. But the Arab armies were no match against the superior firepower of the Jews and their generous British supporters. The British had for years clamped an iron fist over the Palestinians, severely punishing anyone who was caught with a gun or a bullet . My grandmother used to relate the story of how the British came to look for guns one day. One of my uncles had an old pistol. As they appeared on the scene, she was sitting on the floor kneading bread in the large wooden bowl that she inherited from her mother. She hid the gun in the mound of dough. They searched the house and left empty-handed. Later, she proudly related another story about how she gave one of my uncles a gold piece and told him to go to Jerusalem and buy a decent gun. He was unable to find one.
The British, we were told, disarmed the Arabs and gave the Jews whatever weapons they wanted. Years later, upon reading the work of Israel's revisionist historians ( Tom Segev, Benny Morris, Simha Flapan and Avi Shlaim) one discovers that this Palestinian narrative, culled from here and there by simple villagers, with some minor adjustments was in fact quite close to the truth. I cannot easily describe the feelings of hurt, and bitterness among the people I knew who weathered the first harsh winter in the Dheisha refugee camp outside of Bethlehem. But they made it, somehow, with the minimum necessities of life provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees.
Tents and blankets were provided along with some basic foodstuffs. What sticks in my mind from those days is a bitter feeling of a cold chill that never went away and the mud that surrounded us after the rain. My father decided it was time to send me to school. He asked around and was told that the best school was one run by the Fréres, French Christian brothers, where kids learnt English, Arabic and French . He took me there one day and we saw the director, a brother who wore a black robe with a white collar around his neck. He spoke broken Arabic and was obviously a foreigner. When my father heard what it would cost to send me to school he promptly said: " Come, boy, let us go." My father could ill afford the expensive tuition fees. He had just lost his house and his land and had no job.
Whatever little money he had saved was frozen in Barclays Bank in Jerusalem near Bab El-Khalil. It was years later before my father was able to retrieve his small savings. The director then asked him how he got his name and my father told him that his own father was an Algerian who had migrated to Palestine. The director then asked my father if he had kept his father's identity card. The next day, we went back to the school and showed my grandfather's ID card which was written in a foreign language. The director then said that my father was in luck because this meant that we were descendants of a French citizen (because Algeria was [at the time] part of France) and as such we were considered French citizens overseas.
This, according to the director, entitled us to a free education because the French Government would have to pay our fees. And this they did for all the years that I and my two younger brothers attended that school. In those days, going to Jerusalem was a major undertaking. One had to take a bus from Bethlehem, which would wind its way up and down steep inclines. Very often I would throw up and feel embarrassed until I saw that other people were going through the same thing. The city had become truncated. A fence and a wall separated the Jewish part from the Arab part.
Whenever I went there I would walk along the wall and see cars and buses on the other side. I often wondered what kind of people rode these buses and these cars. I hated them from a distance although I really never saw any of them face to face. All I knew is that they came and threw us out of our homes, took over our land and made our life miserable. Some day, I thought, we will drive them out of there and go back to our homes and fields.
A Jerusalem Memoir Professor Fouad Moughrabi, Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee.
I was born on a hill overlooking Ein Kerem. From the top of that hill, one could easily see the skyline of Jerusalem during the day and its shining lights during the night. My father managed a resort run by the Anglican Church atop Jebel El-Rab (the hill of God). On Sundays, dignified people (including many Jews and foreigners) would come there for tea and dessert. Down in the valley where the beautiful village, known for its greenery, gardens, and scenic landscape, was nestled, the fields would be dotted with groups of picnickers from Jerusalem, out for a relaxing day in the country. Ein Kerem is the birthplace of John the Baptist and Mary is said to have visited it before giving birth to Jesus.
It was a[n] (..) Arab village until 1948, with some Christians and some Muslims. It is now part of Jewish West Jerusalem, and no Arabs live there, the village having been emptied of its original inhabitants in 1948. Ehud Olmert, the right wing mayor of Jerusalem, wants to build more houses in the area in order to bolster the overall number of Jews in Jerusalem as a whole. The Jewish inhabitants, mostly highly educated professionals, prefer to keep it as is. Says Karl Perkal, one of the leaders of the residents' committee which is fighting development: "Ein Kerem is a magnet for Christians from abroad because they are pleased to come to a place that basically looks like it did when Jesus walked the land...This is also important to nature lovers because it is the last green space in Jerusalem. We've been fighting for a generation to keep developers out." (Christian Science Monitor, 9 February, 1998) I recall going with my grandmother to the pine forest atop the mountain and down near the Russian convent to pick mushrooms. She would take time out to show me the various flowers, which she called Hannoun. She had a specific name for each one and could tell me exactly what each was good for. Some were useful for an upset stomach and some for helping you go to sleep. For each ailment there seemed to be a remedy right there in those fields. And then there was the ubiquitous thyme (Za'tar) which smelled strong and which we picked in abundance. She would dry some and later grind it. Sometimes, she would add some to the bread that she baked in an oven (Taboun) made of clay.
I also remember accompanying my grandmother during her daily trek to work in the fields or to take produce or fruits, which she carried in a wide basket on top of her head and walked the few kilometers to Jerusalem to sell it in Katamon.
She was, it seemed, one with the soil and its fruits. It is only now as I write this down and as the memories flood my soul that I fully realize the impact she had on me. I love going to a market to marvel at the beauty of such things and I [handle] them with the same tenderness that she once showed me. My grandmother, on my mother's side, was a tall woman with an imposing presence. She single-handedly raised four boys and a girl while working the fields and selling the fruits of her labor in order to (make) out a modest living for her family. Her face was already wrinkled well before the age when such marks were supposed to appear. It almost matched the topography of the land that she so carefully and diligently cultivated in much the same way that her forebears had done for thousands of years. The color of her face almost matched that of the olives that she picked, pressed and ate.
On cold winter evenings, I remember falling asleep in her lap, next to a (.) kerosene stove, listening to the stories that I incessantly wanted to hear over and over again. She was happy to pass on the folklore that she had inherited. Years later, I discovered that many of these stories were in fact part of the Old Testament and the Koran. She was an illiterate woman but she knew her stories, passed on from one generation to the next, forming a common heritage and perhaps becoming part of the religious lore.
She was the matriarch of the family. Her husband played a peripheral role although he was granted the respect that a dignified elder was entitled to. But he was disabled and could not carry his share of the burden. Therefore, he often deferred to her in matters of consequence. But she never made him feel that she was the one who made these fateful decisions and she never let on to the outside world that she was the one who ran the show. She was feared and respected in the village because of her no-nonsense approach, her candor and her outspokenness about various issues. When my father came to ask for my mother's hand, fierce objections erupted among members of the extended family. Cousins lay first claim and argued against giving the young girl away to a foreigner who had no roots and no known relatives. My father was born in a neighboring village to a father who had migrated to Palestine from Algeria and to a Palestinian mother. Both of his parents died soon after he was born and he grew up in the Islamic orphanage in the Old City of Jerusalem. He learned a variety of skills including carpet weaving and cooking. Later he got a job at the resort atop Jebel El-Rab where he spotted my mother.
My grandmother made the controversial decision to give her only daughter away to this man and managed to convince her immediate family to go along. I have a picture of my father and mother taken at a Jerusalem studio owned by an Armenian photographer shortly after they got married. He is sitting in a chair looking solemn, as befits the occasion, and she is standing next to him, with her right hand on his shoulder and a shy smile on her face. He is wearing a nicely cut western style suit, tailored in Jerusalem. Only his shoes are somewhat rough, and not polished, showing perhaps a person who walks long distances in the fields. She is wearing her wedding dress, a beautiful traditional Palestinian Thob that was the product of many hours of labor by the women in the family and in the village. He does not look like a peasant or even the son of a peasant. His hair is well groomed and his hands are soft. She, on the other hand, definitely looks like the daughter of peasants. He was twenty-four years old and she was only eighteen.
My father built a small house on a hill overlooking Ein Kerem. On the other side of the hill was the tiny village of Jorah where my mother's relatives lived. This small stone house was typical of village constructions, designed to be expanded as time goes on with one room added here and another added there. Outside, there was a small kitchen and an outhouse. On the eastern part of the house, a bunch of bougainvillea grew in a haphazard manner. I remember crawling underneath them to look for eggs hatched by our chickens. On the Western side, there were a couple of olive trees and a fig tree. And right next to the kitchen, there was a water well. I had a cat, a dog, and at one point, a sheep. One day, a sheepherder went by with his flock and I chased him and his sheep screaming that I wanted to have one. He gave me a sheep on condition that I would take care of him.
There were, however, moments of anxiety generated by talk about a vague and distant threat coming from the Jews. The only ones I had seen in those days were the distinguished looking ones who frequented my father's place of work and the pediatrician that my parents had taken me to in Jerusalem.
They were kind and cultured people and my father used to say that some day I will become educated and important like them. I do remember that one day my uncles joined a crowd of other men from the village and walked in a hurry to a nearby village called Kastal where a big battle was going on between the Arabs and the Jews. Abdul Kader Husseini was leading the Arabs in this battle. We laughed at Uncle Mohammed, the black sheep of the family, a simple man with no education at all, who was usually left in charge of the goats. He took an old hunting musket, which had not been fired in many years and joined [in] (.). A few hours later he came back while the others joined the crowd of fighters to Jerusalem to participate in the funeral of the fallen commander Abdul Kader. Meanwhile, the Jewish forces, which had been driven out of Kastal, simply walked back in and took it over, thereby controlling once and for all the main road to Jerusalem.
I was sent to a Kuttab in the village. This one room schoolhouse was run by a religious man who was supposed to teach us how to read, write and memorize the Koran. I memorized a small part of the Koran and learned to read and write. The few Suras came in handy on Fridays when my father would take me to the Mosque in Jerusalem.
Two things stand out in my memory: one was the awe-inspiring beauty of the Dome of the Rock. My father would explain to me its history and point out its artistic beauty. To me, however, what was most enjoyable was to sit on the clean stone pavement in the coolness of the shade and to eat the kinds of things I usually did not get to eat at home, namely Ka'ak and Falafel with a bit of Za'tar and a hard-boiled egg. The second thing that always struck me was the incredible crowd that filled the narrow streets and alleys of the Old City as the faithful departed following their prayers. As a little boy, I felt claustrophobic as I was pushed and shoved by people and carts. I remember being envious of the children who roamed the streets and alleyways of the city, joking, teasing and running skillfully through the crowd. To me, they seemed free and clever.
I always imagined myself joining their frolics in total abandon, watching the tourists go by, knowing every nook and cranny of the city. The city always seemed mysterious to me, enveloped in layers, with doors that led into courtyards, to other doors, and stairs going to upper floors at different angles. What do these people do behind these doors, in these courtyards, and in those dark alleys?. The women who hid behind dark veils and walked in groups, always clad in black added to the mystery. I never saw any women like that. I would follow them, and as they invariably walked in the fabric shops, I would sneak a look at their faces as they lifted their veils to look more closely at the fabric they were thinking of buying. Some of them would glance quickly in my direction and then turn away, reassured that this invader is nothing but a short and insignificant tot. Nearly always, I felt a kind of disappointment at the ordinariness of their looks. Invariably, my father would buy some things for the house depending upon what was in season: possibly some oranges and bananas and always some sweets like Baklava. He would also buy me some trinket and we would then head to the packed bus that would take us back to Ein Kerem.
In April 1948, following the massacre at Deir Yassin, the feelings of fear and anxiety, which used to be vague and distant began to appear more imminent and more real. I could still hear my grandmother and my mother hurling curses mostly on the British and often on the Jews. My mother packed some clothes in a long sack that she had sewn and left it in the corner of the house. At night, some of the men would go to the edge of the village and do guard duty. One night, everyone was awakened to the sound of one of these men who went through the village screaming : "Go !, the Jews are coming." I can still recall the voice and the ensuing chaos. Within a short period of time, the entire village was marching out, carrying bare essentials, some bedding on a mule, some clothing, and some food. We spent the night in the fields a few kilometers out.
Overhead we could see streaming lights and we could hear whizzing bullets and explosions. From a distance, we could see other villages pack up and leave in the same chaotic and hurried manner. The next day, we resumed our trek in the direction of a village called Ras Abu ’Ammar. On the way, we could see some dead bodies and some scattered limbs where explosions had occurred and tore up human bodies that were left lying there. We spent a month in this village and then, when the Jews came again we resumed our walk in the direction of Bethlehem.(..)
Our exile from our homes was supposed to be for a short duration. People thought that they would be going back to their homes and land in a matter of weeks. Surely the Arab armies would enter Palestine and stop the Jews. The frame of reference, for most people, were the Arab conquests in the early Islamic period when armies swept through many lands and defeated enemies with superior force, or the battles waged by Salah Eddin against the foreign invaders.(..)
Shortly afterwards, however, as our exile began to get longer and longer, new stories began to emerge. They all focused on great conspiracies being hatched against the Palestinians. The Jordanian Arab Legion, we were told, did not fight at all. King Abdullah and his British commander Glubb Pasha handed Palestine over to the Jews. The Egyptian Army fought with empty bullets. Only the Iraqis and some volunteers from various Arab countries did any worthwhile fighting. But the Arab armies were no match against the superior firepower of the Jews and their generous British supporters. The British had for years clamped an iron fist over the Palestinians, severely punishing anyone who was caught with a gun or a bullet . My grandmother used to relate the story of how the British came to look for guns one day. One of my uncles had an old pistol. As they appeared on the scene, she was sitting on the floor kneading bread in the large wooden bowl that she inherited from her mother. She hid the gun in the mound of dough. They searched the house and left empty-handed. Later, she proudly related another story about how she gave one of my uncles a gold piece and told him to go to Jerusalem and buy a decent gun. He was unable to find one.
The British, we were told, disarmed the Arabs and gave the Jews whatever weapons they wanted. Years later, upon reading the work of Israel's revisionist historians ( Tom Segev, Benny Morris, Simha Flapan and Avi Shlaim) one discovers that this Palestinian narrative, culled from here and there by simple villagers, with some minor adjustments was in fact quite close to the truth. I cannot easily describe the feelings of hurt, and bitterness among the people I knew who weathered the first harsh winter in the Dheisha refugee camp outside of Bethlehem. But they made it, somehow, with the minimum necessities of life provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees.
Tents and blankets were provided along with some basic foodstuffs. What sticks in my mind from those days is a bitter feeling of a cold chill that never went away and the mud that surrounded us after the rain. My father decided it was time to send me to school. He asked around and was told that the best school was one run by the Fréres, French Christian brothers, where kids learnt English, Arabic and French . He took me there one day and we saw the director, a brother who wore a black robe with a white collar around his neck. He spoke broken Arabic and was obviously a foreigner. When my father heard what it would cost to send me to school he promptly said: " Come, boy, let us go." My father could ill afford the expensive tuition fees. He had just lost his house and his land and had no job.
Whatever little money he had saved was frozen in Barclays Bank in Jerusalem near Bab El-Khalil. It was years later before my father was able to retrieve his small savings. The director then asked him how he got his name and my father told him that his own father was an Algerian who had migrated to Palestine. The director then asked my father if he had kept his father's identity card. The next day, we went back to the school and showed my grandfather's ID card which was written in a foreign language. The director then said that my father was in luck because this meant that we were descendants of a French citizen (because Algeria was [at the time] part of France) and as such we were considered French citizens overseas.
This, according to the director, entitled us to a free education because the French Government would have to pay our fees. And this they did for all the years that I and my two younger brothers attended that school. In those days, going to Jerusalem was a major undertaking. One had to take a bus from Bethlehem, which would wind its way up and down steep inclines. Very often I would throw up and feel embarrassed until I saw that other people were going through the same thing. The city had become truncated. A fence and a wall separated the Jewish part from the Arab part.
Whenever I went there I would walk along the wall and see cars and buses on the other side. I often wondered what kind of people rode these buses and these cars. I hated them from a distance although I really never saw any of them face to face. All I knew is that they came and threw us out of our homes, took over our land and made our life miserable. Some day, I thought, we will drive them out of there and go back to our homes and fields.
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